1-16-26
The Resurrectionist of Wraithwood Abbey
In the mist-veiled hills of Victorian Derbyshire, where abandoned abbeys crumbled beneath ivy and the cries of ravens echoed like lost prayers, there dwelt a man whose very name became synonymous with the forbidden, Dr. Mortimer Graves, the Resurrectionist of Wraithwood Abbey.
He had once been respected a surgeon of uncommon skill, trained in Edinburgh, whose steady hands saved lives on the battlefields of the Crimea. Tall and gaunt, with iron-gray hair and eyes the color of surgical steel, he returned from the war changed. Colleagues whispered that he had seen too much death, that the constant proximity to the dying had awakened something cold and insatiable within him. By 1865, he had withdrawn from society, purchasing the ruined abbey on the edge of the Peak District and sealing himself within its stone walls. No wife, no children, no visitors, only rumors.
The locals called him the Grave Robber, though not for stealing bodies. Something far worse.
On storm lashed nights, when thunder rolled across the moors like artillery, strange lights flickered in the abbey's shattered cloisters greenish phosphorescence that danced between the graves of long forgotten monks. Coachmen on the old turnpike road swore they saw figures moving against the lightning, a tall man in a black frock coat, bending over fresh earth, accompanied by shapes that should not walk.
The truth, known only to a handful of London occultists who corresponded with him in coded letters, was both simpler and more terrible.
Dr. Graves had discovered a method, not of true resurrection, but of temporary reanimation. Using a combination of galvanic batteries, rare chemical compounds distilled from night blooming plants, and incantations drawn from a crumbling 14th century grimoire he had acquired in Constantinople, he could jolt a recently deceased body back to a semblance of life for a few precious hours.
But he did not do this for science alone.
During those fleeting intervals of returned vitality, the subject, eyes milky, voice a hollow rasp, would speak of what lay beyond the veil. Visions of shadowed realms, forgotten knowledge, secrets of alchemy and astronomy buried with the dead. Graves recorded everything meticulously in leather bound journals, extracting not just information but something more vital, fragments of the soul's lingering essence. Each session left him stronger, sharper, as though he siphoned the departing life's final clarity into himself.
He chose his subjects carefully. A mathematician who died of consumption, yielding proofs no living mind had conceived. An explorer lost in Africa, murmuring of lost cities and ancient gods. The lost explorer is so interesting!!! A hanged murderer, whose confession revealed hidden treasure, and a technique for bending others to one's will. That’s also really good too! With every revival, Graves grew younger in aspect, his step firmer, his gaze more piercing. The abbey’s graveyard, ancient and forgotten, provided ample material, but when it ran low, accidents seemed to befall travelers on the moor.
By the 1880s, those few who glimpsed him described a man who should have been in his sixties yet appeared no older than forty. Spiritualists in London spoke in awed terror of "the Doctor who borrows from death's library." One daring investigator from the Society for Psychical Research visited Wraithwood in 1889, only to vanish, his body was later found in a ravine, face frozen in an expression of unspeakable revelation.
Dr. Mortimer Graves was last seen in 1893, during a great storm that tore slates from the abbey roof. Lightning illuminated a figure in the highest tower, arms outstretched as if conducting the tempest itself, surrounded by pale shapes that moved like smoke.
Wraithwood Abbey lies in ruins now, its stones blackened by an unexplained fire in 1894. But on certain stormy nights, green lights still flicker among the graves. Hikers report hearing a calm, cultured voice asking questions in the wind,questions about the moment of death, about what was seen in the final instant.
He is still borrowing.
And the dead, it seems, have not finished speaking.
How these two pieces were made was in a warehouse during a seance with a conduit and a glass blower! These were so freaking hard to make! You have no idea! These were actually dangerous to do. But, we got them! To use them just wear and ask for what you want or need to know. You can also wear this into a graveyard and do your thing with it there. I have two of these. These are very small.
